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Dry Bones and the Breath of Life - Lectionary Reflection for Lent 5A (Ezekiel)

37 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me
out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was
full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very
many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to
me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then
he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I
will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will
lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with
skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am
the Lord.”

7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded;
and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came
together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews
on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was
no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the
breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may
live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came
into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones
are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope
is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and
say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring
you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of
Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open
your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I
will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your
own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says
the Lord.”

********

The
Babylonian exile was a tragic, and yet fruitful event in the life of the people
of Israel. It was tragic, because the nation was torn apart. Yet, the exile also
gave Judah an opportunity to rediscover its identity as a people. Much of what we
know as the Old Testament emerged in the context of the exile. While, it was a
challenging time for the people of Judah, who found it difficult to live in
hope of a new and better day.

Ezekiel
was a prophet who arose in the context of the exile, and he spoke words that
chided the people when they were unfaithful, but he also shared words that
offed hope of a new day, when the people of Israel would experience
restoration. One of the most powerful words of hope to be found in Ezekiel, if
not all of scripture, is this passage from Ezekiel 37. Can dry bones live? That
is the question of the hour. It is the question that YHWH asked of the prophet
after delivering him to a plain covered with dry, lifeless bones. Can these
bones live? All that Ezekiel can answer is: “you know.” That is, Ezekiel has no
idea how dry, lifeless bones could ever be restored to life. Only God knows,
and it’s possible that as the conversation started, Ezekiel had his doubts.

If
Ezekiel has doubts, God has a plan. There’s a reason why God brought Ezekiel
out to this plain covered with dry bones. God wanted Ezekiel to better
understand his prophetic calling. God wanted him to preach, to share the word,
so that Israel might once again live. This is the word given to Ezekiel: “say
to the bones: “hear the word of the Lord.” I think we should let that phrase
sink into our hearts and minds. “Hear the Word of the Lord.” Remember the
message of John’s prologue, which declared that the Word (Logos) was in the
beginning with God and was God, and that all things came into being through
him, and “in him was life” (Jn. 1:1-4). The Word of the Lord is life, and if
Ezekiel will preach to the bones, then God will breathe life into them, so that
the bones will know who the LORD is.

Ezekiel
does as God asks, and then witnesses God’s fulfillment of the promise made to
Ezekiel. The bones begin to rattle and come together to form skeletons (we
could use a bit of Disney animation here). On these skeletons flesh appears.
But, the text of Ezekiel says that to this point “there was no breath in them.”
It would be fitting to go back to Genesis 2, the second creation story, where
God forms the first human from the dust of the earth. The basic building blocks
are there, but life isn’t yet present. Life awaits the breath of God. As we
read in Genesis, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the
man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). In Ezekiel, God tells the prophet to
“prophesy to the breath, saying: “Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four
winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (Ez. 37:9).
When Ezekiel complied, the winds came forth, and filled the lifeless bodies
with breath. Of course, the Hebrew word, like the Greek word, for breath is
also the word for Spirit (ruach/pneuma).
In the biblical story, life isn’t separate from the presence of God’s spirit.

It is
important that we recognize that Ezekiel isn’t speaking about individuals. He
has in mind a people, the people of Israel, who have experienced the
devastation of conquest and the humiliation of exile. Not everyone in the
nation of Judah found themselves in Babylon, but whether in Babylon or in the
land of Israel, the people of Judah had lost their sense of identity. It was as
if they had died. The Spirit of God seemed
absent from the people. Now, it needs to be said that the Spirit of God wasn’t
truly absent, but the people seemed disconnected from the life-giving Spirit of
God. The presence of the Spirit can be seen in the work of the prophets,
including Ezekiel.

This is
a well-known passage of scripture. It’s vivid in its descriptiveness. The
valley of dry bones coming back to life; it’s a powerful image. But what does
it have to do with us? What word does God have for the church in the 21st
century, a church that is beginning to see itself in terms of exile. We seem to
be a collection of dry, lifeless bones scattered across the plain. I hear it
all the time. I hear it from colleagues who bemoan what appears to be the
prolonged death of the church. I hear it from church members, who remember the
glory days, when Sunday was marked by church attendance. Churches were full.
The congregation I now serve is relatively small, but once it was a grand and
powerful congregation. Its pastor was nationally recognized (he served as
President of the Federal Council of Churches). The church sat on Detroit’s
“Piety Row.” Times changed, the church began a slow decline, and it eventually
moved to the suburbs. For a long time, it clung to its former heritage, but the
reality is that the congregation had gone into exile. This congregation isn’t
alone in this, even if a congregation hasn’t moved from its original space. The
promise here, of course, is that the exiles will return to the Land, to the
soil, upon which the people had once been a nation of some importance. It’s not
likely that our congregations will return to their original glory, but the
spirit of exile can give way to a new spirit of hope and service. We can take
root in our new realities, and be witnesses to God’s gracious presence. The dry
bones can hear the Word of God and come to life, filled with the Spirit, so as
to become signs of God’s presence in the world.

Perhaps
the key to restoration is attending to the Word of God. I speak here to my more
“progressive/liberal” colleagues, who often struggle with Scripture. Yes,
Scripture can be difficult to navigate. It says things that we may find
problematic. After all, it emerged in a very different world, and yet it does
have something powerful to say, if we’re willing to listen. While critical
scholarship is essential to getting the context straight, if we begin and end
there, we may end up missing a Word from God. Walter Brueggemann suggests that
we would be better of moving on from focusing our attention on questions of historicity,
and focus more on the overarching narrative that is Scripture. He speaks of the
Exodus story here, but I think it holds for other conversations. Of the
biblical narrative, he writes that we might see it as “a script that is waiting
to be performed; it is always being given new performance, even in our own time
. . .” [Rebuilding the Foundations,
p. 193]. With that in mind we can get a sense of the overarching message of
this narrative. Kelton Cobb writes that “at the core of the biblical narrative
is the story of displacement—of having wandered a long way from home, and
longing to return. This is the underlying plot of being cast out of Eden, of
being foreigners in Egypt, of the journey to the promised land, of the long of
exiles in Babylon to return to the land of their fathers” [Feasting on the Word, 126].

It is
this narrative of exile and return that defines our own realities, including as
churches. When we feel as if we’re in exile, we long to return home. That might
be why there is such interest in genealogies. We want to know where we belong,
so we can return to our homeland. When I went to England, during my sabbatical,
I had this feeling of connecting to my roots.
This was my homeland. When I went to Christ Church Cathedral and
experienced Evensong, it was as if I had come home. So, I understand this
longing for home. It is a longing that defines salvation. As Augustine wrote in
The Confessions, the restless heart
will not find rest until it rests in God. Is this not our own desire? Do we not
want to find our homeland? For Judah, it was the Land, for us, it is the realm
of God.

So,
what do we make of this powerful story? What word does it have for us? At one
level this might be a good word about the power of preaching, even if our
culture doesn’t seem to value preaching in the same way it once did, there is
her a call to bring the Word so that the Spirit might move. When we hear the
word “prophesy,” a number images might come to mind, most of which don’t seem
to apply to those of us who enter pulpits to preach. But, in many ways that is
what we’re called to do. We’re asked to bring a Word from God to a community.
Ron Allen and Clark Williamson write that “preaching her is the means of
restoration. Through preaching the breath of God enters the bones. An
implication is that pastorally sensitive prophetic preaching can play a key
role in revitalizing community” [Preaching the Old Testament, p. 37].

This is
the word given to Israel, and by extension to the Church: “I will put my spirit
within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you
shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.” The
church in the West is experiencing a reality that it hasn’t faced in centuries.
No longer supported by government or even cultural establishment, it must fend
for itself, or depend on the Spirit of God. Many congregations feel as if their
bones are “very dry.” They feel as life has been drained from them, but here is
a word of hope. Say to the bones – Live. Call for the wind of the Spirit to
breathe life into the bones of our congregations. We may be in exile, but the
realm of God is there in front of us.

Picture attribution: Elkan, Benno, 1877-1960. Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55841 [retrieved March 27, 2017]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Collantes,_Francisco_-_The_Vision_of_Ezekiel_-_1630.jpg.

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I am a Disciples of Christ pastor, theologian, community activist, historian, teacher. I'm a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a M.Div. and a Ph.D. in Historical Theology. I'm the author of a number of books including
Out of the Office: A Theology of Ministry (Energion, 2017), Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016), and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).